Kellerstrass Farm: Home to Kansas City's First Airfield (1919)

In 1919, distiller and poultry farm operator Ernest Kellerstrass responded to the need for a safe place to land aircraft by turning over part of his farm to the city to build a public landing strip for airplanes. The Kellerstrass property included a hundred acres from 85th Street to 89th Street, spanning from Oak Street to Troost Avenue, and it was here where Kansas City aviators first had a safe place to land after years of landing at golf courses and the open but hilly fields at Swope Park. Two years later, Kansas City, Kansas, converted land along the Missouri River into an airstrip that became Fairfax Industrial Airport. And in 1927, Charles Lindbergh dedicated Kansas City, Missouri's Municipal Airport, still in operation today as Charles Wheeler Municipal Airport.

Ernest Kellerstrass was born in 1866 in Peoria, Illinois, and moved to Kansas City, where he established a distillery in 1899. After selling stock in the successful operation, he bought another distillery in Clay County, Missouri. Using the railroads, he operated a mail-order business for his whiskey that included a system of rewards for his best retail customers. With each gallon of whiskey purchased, for example, a grocer or bar owner received a certificate. Once they saved enough certificates, they could redeem them for items in a catalog.

He was a successful poultry farmer and distiller who earned a reputation for generosity. The Christmas edition of the Kansas City Journal in 1903 recorded that he gave a holiday bonus of gold coins to all his employees and everyone he encountered regularly, from the mailman to telephone operators. The following year, Kellerstrass sold his company and fulfilled a life dream of starting a farm. The new owners continued to operate Kellerstrass Distilling Company from St Louis and Kansas City until 1916, as new restrictions on selling whiskey by mail made the business untenable. Ernest's chicken farm soon became a commercial success, partly owing to his authorship and sale of a book titled "The Kellerstrass Way of Raising Poultry." Kellerstrass died in 1946 and is buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery.

National Agricultural Library. "The Kellerstrass Way" of Raising Poultry, National Agricultural Library Digital Exhibit. Accessed August 1st, 2024. https://www.nal.usda.gov/exhibits/ipd/frostonchickens/items/show/158.

Find-A-Grave, Ernest Kellerstrass, Mount Moriah Cemetery, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/80458014/ernest-kellerstrass accessed 8/1/24

Sullivan, Jack. The Whiskey Man Who Loved Chickens, July 6th, 2013. Accessed August 1st, 2024. https://pre-prowhiskeymen.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-whiskey-man-who-loved-chickensl.html.

Roe, Jason. When did Charles Lindbergh come to Kansas City?, Kansas City Public Library. Accessed August 1st, 2024. https://kchistory.org/faq/when-did-charles-lindbergh-come-kansas-city.